" Our presence globally affects all ecosystems in some fashion. "
That there. CO2 level affects the very bottom of the food chain - trees, plants, plankton - and hence everything on up, plus it affects the geology too. Before the industrial revolution large areas of the globe would be free of soot and man-made CO2, but those days have gone and you can look through the IPCC website at all the global effects of our civilisation. Given that ice ages naturally occur every 100,000 years, sustainable civilisation isn't really sustainable unless our descendants take it upon themselves to stop the Earth wobbling on it's axis or something equally drastic. The biosphere as it is, which is so conducive to human life, is due to be wiped out naturally in the future despite any conservation efforts. Which doesn't make it unreasonable to fight to maintain things as they are, because few people really want to see catastrophe, but I think sooner or later we will have to admit that we don't really want true wilderness we want a domesticated planet.
Or maybe there is no 'we'.
|